KCTV5 Investigation: Ahead Of The Game

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Most parents don't know a lot about the condition of their child's football
helmet.
How old is it? What kind of shape is it in? Does it fit properly?
School districts all over Kansas
City are sending their helmets off for reconditioning.
Experts advise parents that if they've never heard of reconditioning, they'd
better make sure it's going on at their child's school.
Chief investigative reporter Dana Wright looked into the condition of the football
helmets that are worn by high school athletes in the Kansas City area.
A properly working helmet is just one component involved in minimizing skull
fractures, serious injuries and even possible death on the football field. This
investigation took Wright and her team all the way to Ohio to show viewers what they need to know
before a student athlete takes the field.
"It's just a standard helmet. It's a Riddell helmet. And the gentleman
who wore it was No. 44," said Coach James Sanders.
At the end of the high school football season, Sanders goes through the same
post-season ritual.
"Right now we're talking about 500 helmets and 500 shoulder pads,"
he said.
And while it isn't the most glamorous routine of the season, it is among the
most important, as crews bag, tag and drag hundreds of banged up football
helmets.
The helmets will be checked for problems, fixed and shipped back in a
process called reconditioning.
"Every football coach realizes there's going to be injuries,"
Sanders said. "Having our equipment sent out is to minimize those kinds of
things. We don't want the, 'Oh darns,' we just want to play football in a safe
environment."
To be clear, football helmets are designed to prevent skull fractures, not
concussions. While reconditioning helmets won't guarantee a player is safe on
the field, it's the best way to make sure they work the way they should.
KCTV5 decided to follow a helmet through the process. In this case it was a
purple Northwest High helmet.
Welcome to Elyria, Ohio, home of the Riddell Company. This is
where 1 million football helmets will go through the reconditioning process
each year. The helmets for Kansas, Missouri, Kansas
State and the Kansas City
Chiefs end up being reconditioned by Riddell. And so does the Northwest High
helmet KCTV5 followed. It arrived along with another 500 from Kansas City.
The components are removed, including the chin straps, jaw pads and face
masks. The helmets are stripped bare and sanded and then sanitized. The helmets
are sanitized by putting them through a special machine.
The helmets are then primed and repainted.
But the real reason the helmets are at Riddell is not to make them shiny
again. Workers are looking to catch problems or defects.
And sure enough, while KCTV5 was at the factory worker inspecting the inner
padding of a Northwest High helmet finds something. One of the liners was
defective so it no longer held air.
Workers fixed the problem and sent it down the line.
Mike Oliver is the head of the National Operating Committee on Standards for
Athletic Equipment or NOCSAE based in Overland
Park. The group sets standards nationwide for how
football helmets should perform.
He said catching defects, such as a busted liner, is the reason helmets must
be reconditioned every two years at a minimum.
How can someone tell if a helmet has been recertified?
"There will be a sticker inside the helmet, and it'll be under the
padding obviously because you don't want it on top of the padding," Oliver
said. "But you can pull the padding out. You will see a sticker inside the
helmet that will say, 'This helmet's been certified.' It will give the name of
the company that recertified it and the year it was recertified."
A sampling of the 1 million helmets at the Elyria factor goes through a scientific drop
test -- the equivalent of a player running head first into a concrete wall at
16 mph.
After testing, helmets are returned to the assembly line and the hardware is
replaced and workers place the certification stickers on each one.
Experts said every parent should ask about their school's reconditioning
program. Coaches or athletic directors should be able to answer those
questions.
Both Sanders and NOCSAE officials said a proper helmet fit is so critically
important to a player's safety there are actually 15 steps to the process.
The helmet KCTV5 followed through the process weren't back from Ohio yet, but Wright
said it went through the entire process and was reconditioned and ready to be
recertified.